Tradition
The Costume
The founding members of the Academy have been able to reconstitute the original costume worn by the riders of the Belgian Royal Court at the end of the 19th century honouring as such the Belgian cultural and historical identity.
The costume reminds one of the national colours and emphasises the riders' silhouette and posture.
The Work
The academic riding is a very demanding discipline and requires numerous qualities to be present each day.
First of all, an important amount of patience : it takes up to five or six years to train the horses. Moreover, the rider is never satisfied since, as for any kind of art, perfection cannot be obtained. A musician, a painter, a sculptor knows the satisfaction only an artistic passion can give.
The same artist will however invariably believe he can do better.
The rider does not form an exception to that rule, this constant obsession of improvement, this quest for unobtainable perfection.
The academic rider encounters one more obstacle proper to riding : the rider expresses himself through a living creature. That creature has its own nature, mood, reactions, sensibility. Therefore the riders must take into account the fatigue, the pain, the physical deficiencies, the moral, the laziness etc. of their horse. Every day the unforseeable reaction of this partner must be taken into account.
Apart from psychology the rider must show humility and modesty because an overconfident rider will quickly be outsmarted by his horse. On the other hand the rider must be determined to make progress and must train his horse to build up stamina and muscles as any other athlete should.
The exercices must be repeated time and time again while the horse must equally be thought to work in group and to be integrated in a larger ensemble adapting its gaits and personality.